


Tried my best to be guarded (I'm an open book instead)

by Elisexyz



Series: Logan twins verse [2]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas Isn't Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mentions of Wyatt/Jessica, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-15 17:32:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18077876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Wyatt is freaking out, and Flynn doesn't mind his own business. What else is new?





	Tried my best to be guarded (I'm an open book instead)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissCrazyWriter321](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCrazyWriter321/gifts).



> Well. You asked for it, here it is. The famous Midnight Flogan Heart To Heart. I hope you (and everyone else) will enjoy it!  
>    
>  It's sort of a prequel to the other fic in this series, in which Jessica mentioned Wyatt and Flynn having a Deep Conversation at night, but it can be read as a stand-alone.  
>  Title from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEOOHVNItt8).

Wyatt is going crazy.

As the seconds pass and the clock in the kitchen keeps noticeably ticking in the silence, he just keeps pacing around, walking up to the cabinets and stopping just as he’s reaching to open them, cursing then under his breath and resuming to his restless pacing.

There is alcohol _everywhere_ in this damn place. Mason has stashed some in the kitchen, probably to distract them all so that they don’t go looking for all the bottles he has hidden more carefully around the bunker, but Wyatt knows and right now it feels like he can fucking _smell_ it.

Jessica is pregnant, due in a few weeks, she’s back with them and she has agreed to give him a second chance that he isn’t sure he deserves, he has no idea how to even hold a baby and he is not father material. Yet, he’s inevitably going to be a father. In a few weeks, he’ll have two kids, for _life_.

What’s for sure is that he isn’t going to be drunk for _any_ of it.

Except, he really needs a drink.

He isn’t _ready_. He isn’t _cut out_ for this.

He is pretty sure that if he doesn’t take edge off he’s going to make a run for it, possibly getting himself killed in the process but at least successfully avoiding messing up innocent children for life. Much better to be told that your dad was a dumbass who got himself killed than to actually know him as a mean, angry drunk, right?

(Yes, definitely right, he should know.)

He knows that the other Wyatt, the one who never lost his wife and didn’t even realize how fucking _good_ he had it, was drunk half of the time, Jess told him, and—and it ends _now_.

Even if he has to get someone to chain him to a chair.

Right when he’s done formulating that thought, he sees Flynn approaching the kitchen, frowning at him as he probably wonders what he hell he’s doing pacing like a madman in the middle of the night.

Yeah, well, he’ll take it as a sign.

“Flynn!” he grins, relieved, and in his state of exhaustion and frustration he makes it sound way too cheerful, judging by the way Flynn arches his eyebrows and looks him up and down, probably wondering if he hit his head or something.

“I need a favour,” Wyatt quickly adds, to which Flynn crosses his arms, looking at him with blatant scepticism.

“Let’s hear it,” he says, drily.

Wyatt is sure he’ll be glad to oblige. “Punch me in the face if I touch even a single drop of alcohol.”

The silence that follows is surprisingly long, and Flynn isn’t doing the tap dance that Wyatt had sort of been expecting. He isn’t even grabbing some beer and shoving it down his throat to immediately deck him in the face.

Instead, he looks surprised, then he narrows his eyes at him and calmly asks: “Why?”

Wyatt puffs. “Can’t you just do it?” They both know he _wants_ to.

“Oh, believe me, I’d love to,” Flynn snorts, grinning slightly. “But I’m gonna need a decent excuse for that. ‘He asked for it’ is likely going to get me kicked off the team.”

“I’ll cover for you?”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Silence falls once again, and Wyatt can’t _believe_ that he is being so difficult about this. Flynn was supposed to say ‘Yeah, sure, man, I can’t wait to try it’, not ask him what the deal is. If he had wanted an interrogation, he would have gone to _Rufus_.

Thinking about it, Rufus is still a little stiffy around him – and with good reason – about what happened with Jiya, so there’s a good chance that he’ll agree to it.

“Nevermind,” Wyatt finally says, glaring at Flynn for deciding that _now_ he wants to be a decent person. “I’ll ask someone else.”

Flynn raises his eyebrows. “If _I_ am not doing it without an explanation, exactly who is? Because I know Rufus is pissed at you, but I doubt he’s your man.”

“I’m not giving you an explanation,” Wyatt says, stubbornly.

Flynn’s expression is still as unamused as ever, and it’s with the blankest stare and the calmest tone in this world that he announces: “I hope you don’t think I’m not going to rat you out to your wife.”

Wyatt opens his mouth slightly, probably looking like a dumbass as he gapes, then he quickly protests: “She doesn’t need to know about this!”

“Probably not,” he agrees, unfazed. “Pregnancies are stressful.”

It takes Wyatt a few seconds of staring for him to realize that there is no way Jessica isn’t hearing about this if he doesn’t give an explanation. He’s regretting every choice he ever made in his _life_ to lead him to this moment.

“Fine,” he snaps, crossing his arms and deciding that if he’s sharing his personal shit with the guy he’ll do it while looking at him straight in the eye like it’s no big deal. “My dad was always drunk, and not the fun kind, I am not going to be the same but I can’t even look at Jess with—” He makes some vague gesture around his stomach. “—without _needing_ a drink. Hence the punching. Happy now?”

Flynn answers his challenging expression with a very unnerving blank stare. Finally, he nods once, breaking eye contact only to look around them and sigh heavily, before shaking his head slightly and dropping on a chair.

He gestures towards the empty chair closest to Wyatt, who is having a little trouble catching up.

“Sit,” Flynn orders, drily.

Wyatt raises his eyebrows. “Tell me you are not about to give me a pep talk.”

He isn’t sure he could survive the embarrassment, really. One thing is shooting people side by side with the guy, or even coming to sort of tolerate his presence after months and months spent having him around, but he can’t deal with an heart to heart.

Flynn rolls his eyes. “I’ll make it brief and effective. Sit the hell down.” _Before I make you_ , goes unspoken, and Wyatt briefly tries to assess if it’d be smarter to try and fight it out.

Probably not, he’s way too tired and Flynn is irritatingly taller than him. And better at hand-to-hand. Damn him.

Wyatt finally complies, laying back against the chair in an effort to appear at ease, when in fact he has his stomach tied up in knots and his ears are attempting spontaneous combustion right now.

Flynn contemplates what to say for a few moments, then he simply lays out: “Look. Worrying about being a lousy parent is normal, but pacing around the kitchen in the middle of the night isn’t a good solution, trust me.”

“Speaking from experience?” Wyatt says, way too lightly and without really _thinking_ , it’s just that he doesn’t like this and he wants to move the focus somewhere that isn’t _him_ — and sometimes he forgets that Flynn wasn’t always the crazy guy chasing after Rittenhouse.

“Yes,” Flynn replies, with a particular sharpness that makes Wyatt feel the urge to apologize. “Lorena bought a stash of books on parenting and—and children’s emotional needs and all that. Mostly for my benefit, because I was a wreck and some days I just wanted to bolt out the door.”

Yeah, Wyatt gets the feeling.

“So I should buy books?” he mumbles, unsure of what to make of Flynn sharing personal information just like that, like it’s no big deal.

Meanwhile, _he_ is sitting there and dying inside.

Flynn shrugs. “Surely beats asking me to punch the alcoholism out of you.”

Wyatt can’t help wincing at that, and he suddenly becomes really interested in his own hands.

Flynn draws in a sharp breath. “Look. The important thing to know about parenting— is that you’ll mess it up. It’s trial and error, and some days you’ll make your kids cry, you’ll say the wrong thing, accidentally hit her in the face with a toy— that’s fine. You just do your best day by day.”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for it,” he confesses before he can stop himself.

Wyatt has got real nice hands. He’s had them his whole life, but he’s truly appreciating them only _now_. Five fingers each. Remarkable.

(Actually, given all the time that he’s spent around grenades and the likes of them, it is kinda surprising that he still has all his fingers attached.)

“You are a good man, as much as it pains me to say it,” Flynn says, after a brief pause, and Wyatt finds it in him to grin a little at the remark. “And you love your family. You have a wife to co-parent with you, and a bunch of good friends who are going to want to spoil those poor kids rotten. You have all the help you need, and you’ll do fine.”

That— is actually really comforting.

With him and his dad, there wasn’t really anybody else, he was stuck. But it isn’t even just him and Jess, there are _people_ behind them, people who are going to let him know if he’s fucking up, people to whom he can ask for advice, even in the middle of the night.

That’s—that’s comforting.

“Maybe you’re right,” he concedes, and he dares raising his eyes in spite of the fact that the room feels a little too hot for his liking right now and he thinks it shows on his face. Flynn isn’t laughing at him, at least. He just looks pleased with himself.

“Of course I am,” he says, casually, leaning back against his chair. “Also, if it’s any consolation, for the first few months you’ll probably be too exhausted to worry about anything at all. You’ll just want to sleep.”

Wyatt cracks a smile at that, shaking his head slightly. “Wonderful.” He takes a sharp breath, quickly looking around the kitchen as if he didn’t know it all too well. “I still need you to be my insurance policy,” he adds then.

Flynn scoffs. “How about I get Mason and we start up Alcoholics Anonymous? Meetings in the middle of the night only.”

“Funny,” Wyatt snorts, a little amused in spite himself, and he knows by Flynn’s face that the answer is actually ‘No, Wyatt, neither me nor anybody else is letting you turn into the kind of father who’s drunk five days a week, fucking relax while you still can’.

They spend a few seconds sitting there in silence, still grinning a little at the stupid joke, then Flynn stands up.

“I’m going back to sleep,” he announces. “And you should too, if Rittenhouse jumps tomorrow I’m not getting shot because you can’t see straight.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll go,” Wyatt quickly says. He watches him walk up the door, and he can only think that the guy lost a child and tried to get her back and he got called a terrorist for it, by Wyatt himself too, and yet there he was, getting all personal about a topic that probably sucks for him to merely think about. The idea of losing Jessica again now, of losing the kids he doesn’t even know yet, makes it hard to breathe. “Flynn,” he calls out, before he can chicken out of it.

He turns around, raising his eyebrows questioningly.

“I’m sorry about your family,” Wyatt quickly gets out, his eyes dropping for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever said it before,” he adds, quietly.

Something flickers on Flynn’s face, but in the end he only nods. “Thank you,” he says, before walking out.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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